Page 76 of Becoming Us

I shook my head hard and stood, slapping my cheeks to shake it off. My eyes locked on the drum kit in the corner.

Samuel’s voice floated back to me, soft and certain:Give it another path.

Yeah, I could do that. Cravings were normal. I couldn’t freak out every time the thought crossed my mind. It was going to happen. I just had to give it a different way out.

I slipped on my headphones, grabbed the sticks, and queued up the first song that hit hard. I needed something loud—something that would drag me out of my head and bleed this feeling dry.

This was okay. Hell, you could even argue it was healthy.

Smells Like Teen Spirit. Darker than my usual picks, but it felt right today. The moment the opening drum pattern kicked in, it hit like muscle memory, sharp and real.

Let it go, Noah. Just let it all fucking go for once.

My dad was gone. I knew that. I could even handle it better now—I knew how to be sad, how to sit with it. But sometimes, it still felt like I was pretending. Like the real pain was just behind the curtain, waiting to be let out.

Somehow, while I bottled it up, all those tears had turned to screams. They’d evolved—matured—twisted into something that lived in every corner of my brain. Rage. Resentment. They wrapped around my bones like a second skin.

But they weren’t real. Just a Band-Aid. A patch slapped over the real wound.

The grief.

It felt intangible and impossible to deal with. Why did it still hurt this much? Why did every mention of my dad drop me into that black hole?

I slammed the sticks against the kit, throat raw as I screamed along with the lyrics. I poured myself into every beat, every crash of the cymbals, trying to outrun the thoughts chasing me down. I couldn’t undo the past. But I wasn’t going to let it own me anymore.

I wasn’t going to take this out on Atty.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going to take this out on myself.

I didn’t need it.

What I needed was to let it out. All of it. Just for now. The rest, I’d deal with later. Maybe in another brutal therapy session. But not now. Now, I needed this out of my system.

My arms burned, but the ache was satisfying—earned. Every precise hit sent shockwaves up through my wrists, into my elbows and shoulders, a full-body vibration that pushed me harder. I locked into the rhythm, timing tight, memory guidingevery motion. Sweat slicked my neck and back, my shirt clinging to my skin as I ran the song again. And again. And again.

I wouldn’t stop until it took up every inch of me, until there was no room left for anything else.

In the chaos, my voice mingling with crashing cymbals and thundering bass in my ears, the calm finally came.

I didn’t need anything else right now. Just this.

The sticks blurred in my grip. The vibration from the snare and toms traveled through my forearms, buzzing through the joints, numbing my fingertips. My back curved into the groove, my core tightening to stay grounded as I played. I wasn’t just keeping time. Iwasthe time.

This song had a way of keeping you locked in until the very last note, the very last word. I paused, finally, to catch my breath, muscles trembling. I had no idea how many times I’d gone through it.

Panting, I stilled one of the cymbals with my palm—and jumped at a dull thud behind me.

I yanked off the headphones and turned in my seat. I always kept my back to the door when I played—less distraction—but now I had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

Atty leaned against the door, chest heaving beneath a damp T-shirt, his cheeks flushed from the run. His pale-blue eyes were wide, lips parted, and his brows, those thick, expressive brows, arched slightly, like he was seeing me for the first time.

“Sorry, have you been there a while?” My throat rasped, raw from pushing it too hard. I cleared it, but he kept staring at me like I was an alien who’d just crash-landed on Earth.

A breathless chuckle slipped out of me. “Hey, are you in there?”

He nodded slowly, parted his lips, and let out a soft, “Wow.”

That’s when it hit me—this was the first time Atty had ever seen me play.Reallyplay.